Monday, August 6, 2007

Lawrence Auster’s ‘female trouble’

A month ago, I mentioned here a modest proposal by Lawrence Auster, the “traditionalist conservative” blogger. He would like us to reconsider whether women should be allowed to vote. Seriously. Because women voting can only lead a society to socialistic ruin.

Remarkably, even Auster’s female groupies cheered him on with this. In fact, one of them urged Larry not to be so tentative (as when he wrote: “I do not have an agenda to take away women’s political rights, as my views on the subject are not completely formed”).

Laura W. commented: “You seem afraid of women and their reaction to this idea. Why not drop it until you are more confident in the proposal?”

Bitch. How dare she suggest that Mr. Auster might be, in any shape or form, afraid of women? “If I were afraid,” he replied, “would I say the things I’ve said?”

Indeed. For someone without an “agenda” to disfranchise women, Larry Auster displays a firm awareness of the damage wrought by voters who menstruate. “The influence of women on national politics is to feminize them,” he wrote, “which means to feminize the men.”

He continued: “[W]e all know that women on average base their voting decisions on emotion more than men do. That's just a fact.... [I]s it good for society that half the electorate bases their votes on emotion so much more than the other half?”

Well, a conservative female writer – Mary Jackson of New English Review – has now challenged Auster’s manhood on a deeper level.

She poked fun at him.

Last Saturday, Mary Jackson briefly defended Ayaan Hirsi Ali (a feminist critic of Islam) against a slighting comment by Auster. She wrote: “Perhaps Hirsi Ali is a bit too uppity for Auster. She probably believes women should have the vote.”

And how did Lawrence Auster respond to that cheeky barb?

With the chivalrous tone one might expect from a man who invokes the glories of Victorian England to explain why Western civilization would be better off with women politically powerless?

Uhhh... not quite.

“I'm amazed to see this type of ignorant and stupid commentary at New English Review,” is how Auster began his reply in the comment thread.

Mary Jackson commented back: “Lawrence Auster thinks women should not have the vote. His ideas are therefore not worthy of serious consideration. He also has no sense of humour whatsoever.”

And that, my good friends, really pissed Auster off.

Tonight, he unloaded on Mary Jackson on his blog, accusing her of a “stunning display of incomprehension, undiluted liberalism, political correctness, and cheap ad hominem attack,” and also of executing “a cheap, mindless smear against me.”

In the Narcissus’ pond of Larry Auster’s mind, an attack upon any of his nutty political ideas is a DEFCON-1 threat to his ego, and he thrusts himself into verbal warfare with enormous expenditures of time and energy.

So much fun to watch! In this instance, the fun is in Auster’s complete lack of self-awareness.

On one hand, he is grievously offended by Mary Jackson’s attempt to “marginalize” him (by saying his ideas are “not worthy of serious consideration”). One the other hand... I mean, goodness gracious, he’s the one who publicly broached the notion of DENYING WOMEN THEIR VOTING RIGHTS, which is probably the most self-marginalizing act I’ve ever witnessed by a political blogger who wants to be taken seriously.

As ironies fold into themselves Escher-like, Lawrence Auster proclaims he has been victimized by a “crack of the whip of women's tyranny”... as he seeks to legitimize a discussion of reducing women to second-class citizenship.

I’m willing to bet five dollars that Mary Jackson will consider it a waste of her time to respond to Larry’s Scud-missile barrage. Let’s call it “womanly intuition,” but she probably understands that Auster craves the twisted satisfaction that can only come from publicly attacking his fellow conservatives as liberals-in-disguise.

I'm just too emotional to comment further right now. In fact, I've decided before I vote in the next Presidential election, I will sit down, have a good cry and let my heart guide me in the voting booth.

Mr. Auster has the right idea. Why let facts cloud our judgment? I just hope for the sake of America's male voters --pragmatic one and all - that it's not my time of the month. You never know what button I'm apt to push.

Actors are a breed apart. On "Murder One", Daniel Benzali got it into his head that his character didn't blink. Forget the need for ocular hydration, his character did not blink. (Watch the DVD sometime, I'm not kidding) So he'd spend every take trying not to blink and ask for another take if he did. By the late afternoon, his eyes would be so tired from all this non-blinking, he would shoot his side of a scene, then split for his trailer and let a P.A. read his lines during the other actors' close-up.

Then there was the time he had to be shot through the wire mesh of a jail house visitor's room. He insisted the shot be lined up so his eyes appeared BETWEEN the mesh. No wire could cross his eyes.

Just a couple of reasons he was replaced the second season by Anthony LaPaglia.

Take a tip from that Jackson woman UBM and stop giving the Auster the attention he craves. He's a nut. You've pointed that out. He doesn't have an Army and can't roll on into Poland or Bed-Stuy, so screw that cretin and let's pay attention to something fine. Like Robeson. Great post that was. You are wasting electrons on Auster.

You don't seem to realize that by pushing arguments such as the efficacy of women's political equality, Mr. Auster is showing the inherent flaws of liberalism.

If women's political equality is an unequivocal good then some cultures are better than others. Meaning, American and Western cultures are better than Islamic cultures. But then again, most liberals will tell you that all cultures are equal and therefore women's political equality is neither good or bad. It is but a remnant of a certain culture. This of course would require us to examine the goodness or badness of women's political equality in our culture. But according to you, we can't even have this discussion. And you call yourself a liberal progressive?

Thordaddy: Maybe, instead of constantly having an argument with the liberal pixie that lives in your head, you should try engaging with what people on here actually *say*. Not everything comes down to the (increasingly irrelevant) distinction between liberals and conservatives, you know.

Labelling a viewpoint as 'typical liberal' and attacking it just puts an artificial dartboard in front of whatever's being said. These binary-politics arguments always sound to me like "That's typical Red Sox thinking. And we all know the Red Sox couldn't win the World Series for 84 years! Booyah!"

I didn't actually say you were a liberal progressive, but asked if that is how you refer to yourself. In fact, you are quite conservative on the issue at hand if only in the definitional sense. You are in favor of the status quo but don't articulate why that status quo is good. You are in the same position as Mary Jackson in that you are attempting to defend a concept that has no rational basis.

Thordaddy... nice to see you spreading some of your magic on the NER boards, by the way.

As to your question... since you boldfaced it, I guess I have to respond:

Women's political equality is good because human freedom is good. (I hope we can agree that that's self-evident.) And that essence of human freedom is one's right to participate in the selection of those who make the laws that one must live under. (Still in agreement?)

Auster's premises (as he has spelled them out so far) are like a row of dominoes set atop a house of cards inside a canoe with a hole in it. And it goes a little something like this:

Women, due to their immutable biological nature, will use their political rights to make society more socialistic... until ultimately this socialist statism robs all citizens of their human freedom, and Western civilization dies.

Therefore, women must be protected from themselves. They must sacrifice their freedom in order to ensure the freedom of the whole. (Or half the whole, which I guess is better than nothing.)

It's destroying-the-village-in-order-to-save-it all over again.

For this to make sense, one must assume that women are equivalent to the mentally retarded (who cannot vote) -- congenitally ill-equipped to comprehend enough about our complex world to make rational choices in the political sphere.

To believe that, one must view women as walking, talking estrogen bags without fully functioning intellects. And once you're there, then Auster's assurances that this matter of "politcal rights" is wholly separate from women's "human rights, civil rights, and property rights" rings hollow.

I mean, if you turn back the clock in the living room, you've gotta turn back the clocks in the kitchen and the bedroom too. When you decide that women are emotionally ill-suited to elect their own political representatives, it's not much of a stretch to say, "Well, they're also ill-suited to the professions... to being doctors or lawyers." Like men used to think... back in those days when the white West was at its strongest.

You follow? The premises under which you would deny women their political rights would also justify denying their other rights. Do you believe it's "good for society" that women be allowed to own property? Or would it be "better for society" -- for the stability of marriages, say -- that women not be allowed to own property?

The obvious shouldn't need stating, but apparently it does. Here is Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of HUMAN Rights:

Article 21

Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.

Everyone has the right of equal access to public service in his country.

The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.

People, not men. Human rights, which can only be therefore denied to women if women are not seen as fully human.

Voting does not equal freedom. If women can vote it does not mean they are free or that their right to vote is good. I think this point was made earlier.

Women can vote for abortion. Does that mean women are free or that they are voting for freedom and hence the good?

If women's political equality is a self-evident good then what is the evidence to substantiate this claim? So far, it has only been supported by contrasting our culture to Islam and claiming that dumb men get to vote.

The principle you rely upon is "equality" and not what is good for society. So if men gave up the right to vote then it would be perfectly fine that women did the same so as to express our affinity for equality. This means women's political equality has no fundamental rational basis other than to remain equal to men which is then defined as freedom.

If you disapprove of Auster, you ought to have a closer look at Dr. David "The darkness of the Negro has always repulsed other races" Yeagley. Different from Auster, he and Horowitz are still thick as two thieves.

I understand that women's political equality is a self-evident good for you, but what of those that don't see it as self-evident? What evidence can you provide of its absolute good? I can cite abortion as evidence that women's political equality is not a self-evident good.